“You suggest they might break the law, Baroness?”
“No. I suggest they might indulge in unfettered breeding.”
“Heaven forbid! Now I shall have nightmares.”
Burton said, “Good evening, ladies.”
The two Uppers stopped in their tracks and looked at him. He saw them register, with mutual gasps of consternation, the pistol he was brandishing at them. Their eyes flickered as they took in Swinburne, Trounce and Wells, all standing at his back.
“If you attempt to call for help, I’ll shoot you,” he said.
Both women were exceedingly skinny—almost emaciated—and possessed of protruding joints and absurdly large breasts. Their faces were painted so heavily they resembled masks, and they had ridiculously tall and extravagant wigs balanced precariously on their heads. The pair wore gowns of a vaguely Elizabethan design.
“Who on earth are you?” the one on the left asked.
“My name is Burton. And you are?”
“I am the Baroness Hume of Goldaming, heiress to the sugar beet estates of Sir Jacquard Hume, the Marquis of Norwich and the Norfolk Broads. My companion is Lady Felicity Pye of the Brick Lane Pyes, wife of Earl John Pye, overseer of Bethnal Green Road and chairman of the Pye and Keating Corporation. Burton, you say? What more? Your title, if you please.”
“I am Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton, Knight of the Order of St Michael and St George, Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society.”
“Oh my dear thing!” Lady Felicity Pye cried out. “Why didn’t you say so? Can we be of some assistance?”
“You could tell me how to find the House of Lords.”
“You don’t know? How marvellously extraordinary! Why, you must go down another three flights, turn right, go all the way to the end of the hallway, right again, and it’s straight ahead. The entertainment is already under way, so you’d better hurry up.”
“Forgive me for asking,” Baroness Hume said, “but is that a gun? Why are you pointing it at us?”
“To assure you both of a thoroughly good night’s sleep.”
“Oh, how perfectly terrific!”
“Would you both sit down, please?”
“Sit down? On the stairs? Is it a game?”
“It is.”
“Hooray!”
The women sat and clapped their hands eagerly.
Burton said, “Stun both.”
Ptooff! Ptooff!
“Take one of them over your shoulder, William. Algy, Bertie, you carry the other. I’ll find a room in which to deposit them.”
While his companions took up the two limp ladies, Burton stepped down into a vestibule from which three corridors extended. In the one to his right, two equerries were walking, heading away. They turned a corner and vanished from sight, not having spotted him.
Turning back, he gestured for his friends to follow, moved to the left, and opened a door. On the other side of it, in a room filled with what looked to be shelves of bottled cleaning fluids, an equerry stood facing him, a heavy metal case—perhaps a toolbox—in its right hand.
“You are not—” it began.
The king’s agent whipped up his pistol, saw the red dot on the creature’s face, and pulled the trigger.
The creature’s head snapped back, and its knees buckled. The case fell from its grip and hit the ground with an almighty crash. Tottering backward, the equerry fell into shelves and slid to the floor, taking bottles with it. They smashed and clattered noisily around it.
“Damnation,” Burton hissed.
“That,” Swinburne commented, “was an unholy racket.”
Wells, who was holding Lady Felicity Pye’s ankles, dropped them and announced, “We have company.”
Burton turned. The two Spring Heeled Jacks he’d seen a moment ago were returning, bounding along the corridor. Wells and Trounce shot them down.
“There’s more!” Trounce said. He lowered Baroness Hume to the floor and, kneeling, raised his pistol and started shooting.
“By Allah’s beard!” Burton cursed, as he saw equerries appearing in all three corridors, rounding corners and stepping from rooms. “There’s a lot of them! Back to the stairs, quickly.”
Leaving the two Uppers where they were lying, the chrononauts raced to the landing.
“Intruders! Intruders! Intruders!” the equerries shouted.
“Head, kill,” the men responded. “Head, kill. Head, kill.”
Ptooff! Ptooff! Ptooff!
One after the other, the spring heeled creatures went down.
With his companions at his back, Burton sprinted down the stairs to the next floor, where, before he saw it, an equerry pounced on him and bore him to the carpet.
“Off him! Off him!” Swinburne shrieked. He kicked the side of the creature’s head and, as its chin jerked around, pressed his pistol to where an ear should have been and pulled the trigger. Plastic, bone and pig brains splattered outward.
Burton heaved the corpse to one side and regained his feet in time to kill another of the stilt men before it managed to grab Wells.
“I have the distinct impression,” Swinburne said, “that our presence is no longer a secret.”
Their destination was one flight of stairs away, but the steps were fast crowding with equerries, all yelling, “Intruders! Intruders!”
“You may be right,” Burton said breathlessly.
Now there was no time even for the order Head! Kill! They simply pointed their weapons, fired into the mass of white figures, and forced their way forward.
“No!” Trounce yelled.
It was too late. Swinburne’s pistol gave a deep cough, and, with a deafening bang, equerries flew into pieces, those at the front being hurled forward onto the chrononauts.
Burton’s ears jangled. Pinned down by a struggling figure, he jammed the barrel of his Penniforth Mark II under its chin, averted his face, and fired. Its head exploded. He shoved the twitching carcass to one side and raised his pistol to shoot another, which was looming over him, its cranium already half shorn off, blue fire playing about the horrible wound. Before he could pull the trigger, it knocked the pistol from his hand. The weapon went spinning away over the banister and clattered out of sight.
Burton drew up his knees and kicked out, his heels thumping into his opponent’s stomach. The equerry keeled over, already dead from the damage to its skull.
Struggling to his feet, half deaf, the king’s agent fell over prone bodies, pushed himself back up, and was suddenly gripped from behind, iron-hard arms closing around him, crushing his rib cage until he couldn’t draw breath.
His right ear popped as a voice, right beside it, said, “Your presence is unauthorised.”
Something cracked behind his head. The constricting arms fell away. He turned and saw an equerry dropping to the floor, a hole through its brain. Another was ploughing through the carnage towards him. It, too, went down.
“Splendid weapons, these!” Herbert Wells called.
For the briefest of moments, there came a lull in the fighting. The stairs around Burton were buried beneath limp stilt men, shattered pictures and fallen armour. The walls were scorch-marked, the bannisters broken.
“So much for stealth,” the king’s agent muttered.
From the hallway below, more equerries came hopping.
He reached down and pulled a broadsword from a collapsed suit, hefted it, and found it to be well balanced.
Swinburne, a couple of steps above him, grinned down. “Uh ho! Now they’re in trouble.”
“Stand well back,” Burton said. “And for pity’s sake, don’t fire another explosive.”
“Sorry. It was more powerful than I—”
The poet’s words were drowned out by cries of “Intruders!” as the Spring Heeled Jacks came vaulting up the stairs. Burton swung the sword up and behind his right shoulder then, timing it perfectly, swiped it forward horizontally, decapitating three stilted figures with the single stroke. With Swinburne, Trounce and Wells following, each of them firing shot after shot, he descended the last remaining stairs to the next landing.